The impact, if any, recorded by Africa’s efforts to bring the catastrophic war in Ukraine to a peaceful end may be slight; but Africa cannot be accused of not making any effort at all.

If anything, the visit by some African leaders to the war zone is replete with grave lessons, some of which can find meaning in subsequent efforts by Africa, or by other concerned groups, to find lasting solution to the bloody, internecine crisis.

The African mediation attempt was a big gamble, but no gamble is too risky to stop an otherwise unnecessary carnage; and to prevent a rampage that has potential to consume the whole wide world.

Recently, some African leaders from Comoros Island, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, Egypt, the Republic of Congo and Uganda visited Ukraine and Russia on peace mission to help end their nearly 16-month-old war that has had dire consequence for lives and accentuated tension in global affairs. The visit has attracted both praises and criticisms from statesmen and observers of global events.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the current architecture of global peace and security, a post-world war II design, is essentially to prevent the unconscionable carnage of the past, ensure equality of states, respect for national sovereignty, and ensure global peace through peaceful resolution of conflicts, inter-state and sometimes, intra-state through humanitarian intervention under the emerging international law doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’

It would be recalled that global peace has been thrown into turmoil since February 22, last year when Russia invaded Ukraine in what it termed special military operation to protect its national interest and the obvious eastward expansion of NATO. The conflict edging towards a second year has seen the test of will of great powers, namely, the United States and its European allies in NATO and Russia on the other hand. The Ukraine seems to have become the laboratory to test the latest armaments from the industrial military complexes in the USA and Europe.

In what is clearly a proxy war between the two great powers, much of Ukraine lay in ruin, with fatalities on both sides while the global food chains, especially, grains and fertilizers supply from both countries have been disrupted despite UN-Turkey brokered ease of Russian blockade of Ukrainian grains. Besides there are ever-present apprehension of nuclear holocaust despite feeble assurances of there being a winner in a nuclear fall-out as result of the crisis.

In view of apparent failure of commonsense, every peace effort is welcome, whether from the UN, Beijing, or anyone else. In this respect, African leaders rose to the rescue to stop the carnage and ease the strains on the global food supply chains. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had indeed noted that the conflict was affecting Africa negatively.

Therefore the mission is “to promote the importance of peace and to encourage the parties to agree to a diplomacy-led process of negotiations”.

In their meeting with Ukrainian leaders, African leaders acknowledged the intensity of the hostilities and insisted on the need to end the war. In the words of South African president: “I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard,” he said, adding nonetheless that “there is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later.”

President Zelensky however in response said that his country needed real peace that must commence with “a real withdrawal of Russian troops from our entire independent land”, urging African Leaders to impress it on President Putin to ‘Liberate prisoners’ in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

However, in their meeting with President Putin in St. Petersburg, they brokered peace before Putin that the Kremlin Spokesman said was difficult to implement. As he puts it: “The peace initiative proposed by African countries is very difficult to implement, difficult to compare positions.” The foreign Minister, Sergey lavrov added that “The main conclusion, in my opinion, from today’s conversation is that our partners from the African Union have shown an understanding of the true causes of the crisis that was created by the West, and have shown an understanding that it is necessary to get out of this situation on the basis of addressing these underlying causes”.

This peace mission has been viewed from different prisms. There are those who feel that it was prejudiced from the start, especially with South Africa in the fore front. They held the view that for the mediation to find meaning, the AU should have been the body spearheading it. Others have queried the fact of the mission with the question: what is in it for Africa? Besides, during the visit to Kiev, Russia continued bombardment of the city while African leaders were there forcing the visitors to flee in search of shelter.

In fact, Ukrainian foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had to intone that: “Putin ‘builds confidence’ by launching the largest missile attack on Kyiv in weeks, exactly amid the visit of African leaders to our capital… Russian missiles are a message to Africa: Russia wants more war, not peace.” Also, during the meeting with the African leaders in St. Petersburg, Putin was said to have rudely interrupted the presentation of African leaders. Nevertheless, no one can fault the presence of an African voice on the global stage.

Despite this viewpoints, the goal of peace is to be preferred to war. Russians have enjoyed the goodwill of Africans because Africans know their friends when it mattered most. This however should not be taken for granted by the Russians by showing disrespect for African leadership. African leaders did not embark on the mission for nothing.

They wanted peace; they want the warring factions to allow food and fertilizers to the global markets from where Africans and other members of the global community can buy. After all, no one doubts the desirability of peace measures to fence off a loaming global calamity.